Chaos Has Come
by kostas225cmp
Summary: It has hardly been a month since the defeat of Harbinger and its Reapers when a massive fleet seemingly appears from out of nowhere. Once again Earth is the sight of a cataclysmic war between the alliance of humans and aliens and this new foe led by a man who calls himself 'The Despoiler."
1. Prologue

_The story takes place during events directly after the defeat of the Reapers._

_Once again, Shepard is called upon to fight an evil enemy bent on conquering the galaxy- with Earth being their first target._

_How ol' Abbadon the Despoiler got to the ME universe, among other things, will be explained in the following chapters. (considering readers approve of this story, that is)_

* * *

**Prologue**

Lucky for Shepard, Tali was light enough to carry without him slowing to a crawl. Lucky for Tali, it was only a glancing shot.

His adrenaline levels felt like they were up past his eyeballs and he had a floaty feeling that seemed as if his feet weren't touching the rubble-strewn ground as he ran. He thought he could hear the bolts of their guns pull back as they chambered another explosive-tipped round, and despite his brain screaming at him not to, he turned his head to look over his shoulder for a second to check their progress. The giant men with the horned helmets definitely were getting ready to obliterate him with another volley from their unreasonably large weapons.

Shepard knew he was still too close to them to dodge the shots, and there was no cover nearby that he could leap behind quick enough. Not that cover would make a difference with those guns anyhow, but still...

Time slowed for him while he watched those giants bring their guns up to their shoulders and could actually make out their fingers pushing down on the triggers. But right before they could be depressed enough to fire, Shepard thought he saw a small round shape gently fall from the air in front of them. They must have noticed it too, because all three of them directed their attention to the metal ball as it landed and kept rolling for a few inches. Then a little red light on it blinked maniacally and the thing started ticking.

And then it blew up.

The force of the grenade's explosion threw Shepard off his feet, landing face first in the dirt as he flung Tali out of his arms so as not the crush her beneath him. A thick cloud of grey masonic dust was kicked up and for a moment everything disappeared in it until it was too difficult just to see a couple of meters ahead. He groggily rolled over on his back, supporting himself on his elbows. Shaking off his disorientation, he was able to make out a silhouette through the cloud, which was quickly joined by two others.

He pulled out his sidearm and pointed it at the figures who were now approaching him. He wasn't kidding himself; he knew if even a blast that would have easily brought down a Krogan couldn't kill these black-armored war machines, his pistol wasn't going to do any better. It looked to Shepard that, despite some unknown friend's efforts to save him, this was the end, but damned if they were going to take him without a fight.

"Skipper!" He heard a familiar voice call out. His addled brain tried to remember whose it was. Who used to always call him by that nickname?

"Ash?" he croaked out through a dust-lined throat. As the first silhouette got closer, its shape became more curved at the hips. Armored, but not like one of the walking tanks who were so close to destroying him a moment ago. The dust cloud finally dissipated, and Shepard saw his saviors clearly.

"Skipper, thank God. We thought you two were dead." Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams was at the head of the trio, her face matted with dirt and blood, and shoulder length hair bedraggled and just as dirty. A large dark figure emerged at her side, and Shepard was afraid for a split second that the giants were coming up from behind her, until he noticed the row of tattoos on a thick neck and the unmistakable grinning cast-iron jaw of Arms Master James Vega.

The third was the shortest of the three, and moved with a grace that seemed inappropriate for the heavy combat armor she wore. Shepard's heart fluttered for a moment when he saw Liara T'Soni's round blue features come up beside Ashley's, with a bit more concern in her eyes than the others' had. He didn't need to hear her ask if he was alright; he practically read it off of her face like a letter.

"They nearly had you there, Commander." Ashley extended an arm and helped pull Shepard back on his feet.

Shepard coughed out some of the dirt in his lungs. "Yeah, nearly. Thanks."

"Hey, Loco," said Vega, using the title he had affectionately bestowed on Shepard upon their meeting, "Are you still alive? If you are, that was all me, and if not, it was the LT's fault, here."

Shepard smiled. "I'm not sure, James," he said sarcastically, "Maybe you should throw another grenade at me and find out for sure."

Shepard glanced past Ashley to see the three giants lying on the ground like so much rubble, the fragmentation grenade having cracked open their thick black armor. That definitely was close, he thought. If Ash didn't show up when she did, he and Tali would've been red pulp and gristle.

"Tali!" he remembered. Shepard spun around to find the wounded Quarian girl where he tossed her when they fell. A fine layer of grey dust covered her envirosuit, making her look like she was part of the environment. He gingerly scooped her groaning body back into his arms and supported her masked head with his shoulder. "We have to get her to the med-station, quick." Her intricate skin-tight suit was breached, and the dust wasn't helping to keep her wound from getting infected.

Again, he thought, she was very lucky: the rounds the giants' guns were loaded with appeared to be explosive to a degree, so if one of those giants got her with a straight shot, she would have been blown literally in half. As it was, she was hit by the shrapnel it produced when it detonated on the wall next to her, and that alone was enough to incapacitate her.

Liara's face switched from concern to seriousness and a tinge of pain, "We better hurry in any case. There are more of them coming." Sure enough, amid the ambience of rapid-firing guns and explosions in the distance, the squad could hear the rising chant they had grown to fear in the past couple of weeks.

_Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!_

Gunshots barked from the direction of the chanting further down the street, the bright muzzle flashes throwing back the shadows of a large group of giant horned warriors against the walls of the surrounding buildings. Shepard found their levity disturbing, like they were having the time of their lives casually strolling towards them and popping shots in the air while they shouted praises to their gods. It was like a bar crawl and a fanatical mob put together, just replacing the drunken teens and beer bottles with walking tanks and grenade launchers.

"Let's go. Maybe they haven't noticed us yet." It was possible they were merely attracted by the noise of battle close by, but Shepard didn't exactly want to find if that was the case or not..

Shepard and his team cut through a nearby alleyway going north. They weren't too far from their own lines, that is to say less than half a kilometer, but in the recent days it was a feat of valor just to cross the street on foot without getting shot. The five of them had gotten this far only because their extensive time in the field in the past wars taught them that small group of well-trained and experienced fighters could sneak into almost anywhere. Even Harbinger and its Reapers, with all their self-proclaimed omnipotence, couldn't keep their mechanical eyes on them all the time.

Of course, shit happens, and it's always unwise to forget to factor chance in any plan, no matter how foolproof it seems. And so that's how Shepard and his team ended up getting caught, separated, and chased by these giant maniacs. Chance, and plain old bad luck. Same deal with Tali getting shot, though as was said before, she must have still carried a good bit of luck on her somewhere to still be alive.

Their experience was showing as they wound through the narrow back alleys with speed and efficiency, covering corners and pie-ing suspicious turns in the darkness. The sounds of the enemy behind them may be shrinking with distance, but that didn't give them an excuse for being too complacent. It was better to be careful and have nothing happen than it was to be careless and get ambushed. Even Shepard was covering his sector with his sidearm in one hand while carrying Tali with the other.

They all saw the end of the alley up ahead and silently dreaded the sight of the street that awaited them. They would have to move across open ground, exposed to everything in the world plus the enemy's guns.

Shepard ordered the team to halt inside the alley. "Okay, James," he gently handed the large man his unconscious load, "Hold on to her. You and Liara will go first at the same time while Ash-"

"Shepard..." Liara interrupted, but he kept going.

"-stays here to cover you until you get to the other side-"

"Shepard, what are you going to do?"

Shepard gave her a stern look. "I'll be going last, Liara."

Contrary to popular belief, running past an enemy's field of fire first isn't the most lethal opportunity to do so. If the enemy down the street doesn't expect someone to run right past them, it may take a moment for them to react, by which time the runner will have already reached the safety of the other side. However, should another group have to run after them, they will be doing so with the enemy ready to shoot them once out of cover. This was especially dangerous now, with an enemy whose standard troopers carried rapid-fire grenade launchers in place of conventional weapons.

Liara knew this; if there were any armored giants sitting somewhere around the chokepoint of the street - and odds are there were - Shepard would be the one taking all the hits.

"Shepard, maybe I should go last. I could create a biotic barrier between us and whoever is out there."

"We both know you'd have to be exposed to concentrate on making a barrier that big. You'd be shot the moment you bring it down to make a run for it. I need you and James to cover Ash when it's her turn to go, and I'd be able to cover her, too, giving us two bases of fire on the bad guys."

It was no use arguing with him, Liara understood, and this was no time for feelings or what not. This was something that had to be done.

Vega stood to Liara's left, with Tali slung over a slab-like shoulder, and his rifle tucked under his arm. He had the tensed look of a tiger about to pounce on his prey in contrast with Liara's almost relaxed loose stance.

Shepard nodded at them. "Go." They sped off as fast as they could, Vega's strong legs pushing him forward, and Liara moving with the grace of a dancer.

He couldn't see it, but Shepard could hear the surprised shouts from which certainly had to be coming from the throats of black armored giants, and the unmistakable clacking of bolts being primed. They were too distracted by the obvious running targets to see Ashley peeking around the corner on the right side of the alleyway.

She fired a long burst from her machine gun and by the time she released the trigger, it was already her turn to go. Shepard took her place and got a good look of what he was about to jump in front of.

Just as he suspected, there were three more giants about fifty meters down the street holed up inside a circle of burning and bullet-riddled ground cars and other objects suitable for a makeshift bunker. They were in the process of shouldering their weapons to gun down Ash when Shepard popped as many shots from his pistol at them as he could.

His smaller handgun was not the equal of Ashley's bullet-spraying machine gun, and it was more the report and muzzle flash of it that got the bad guys' attention than the power of the pistol itself did. None of them so much as flinched as Shepard's shots pinged off of their thick armor, and he wondered if they could even feel the impacts they made.

Two of them turned their guns in his direction, and Shepard ducked back in cover as at once all three of them opened fire. The corner he was shooting from a second ago exploded into chunks of concrete and steel, and Shepard had to shield his eyes from bits of masonry. No doubt the third giant was trying to hit Ash, but a quick glance across the street showed that she had met up with the others unharmed, and they were now pouring return fire at the burning barricade to try to keep the enemy's heads down, but they may as well have all been carrying pistols as well for what effect they were having on them.

The enemy fire team wasn't being suppressed, but Shepard couldn't stay where he was any longer. Soon the group of giants they found a street over will follow the sounds of the firefight and come up behind and overwhelm them.

A blue flash of light appeared ahead, and Shepard it surround Liara's form. The light arced towards the barricade and burst upon the heads of the giants, who were engulfed in blue as well. Like helium balloons at a child's birthday party, the three horned warriors gently lifted off the ground and floated up in the air, immobile except for their heads which turned to each other in confusion.

As Liara was using her biotic powers on the giants, Shepard used the opportunity to dash towards her and the rest of the team. Vega took careful aim at the warriors.

"Hold 'em steady, Liara," he said as Ashley joined him in concentrating a withering volley of fire at each giant, one at a time, while they were suspended helplessly above their barricade.

Like all the other times they fought these things in the past two weeks, Shepard's people found that they were unspeakably tough, but not so much that hundreds of bullets won't tear them apart like any other living thing. Before long, they were all dead, and Liara released her biotic hold on them with a pant of breath.

The entire fight began and ended in less than three minutes.

"You three saved my life for the second time in the same night," Shepard said when he finally reached them, "I owe you all a big one."

Liara gave him the same concerned look as before. He smiled at her in return. "Thanks Liara."

She smiled back at him. "You've done more for us over the years. If anything, we owe you-" Her smile disappeared and was replaced with a look of pain again. She closed her eyes. "They're getting closer. We can't stay here any longer."

She was right. The chanting from the large group of warriors could be heard again. They weren't far.

Shepard turned to his crew. With the exception of Tali, who was still unconscious on Vega's shoulder, they're eyes were bruised with exhaustion and resigned duty. Shepard wanted to bet he looked just as bad, if not worse.

At least we're not fighting Reapers, he silently told himself. At least we're not fighting Reapers.

He nodded to his team. "Let's go, people. They probably miss us at headquarters." They nodded back. Weary of war as they were, there was still one going on, and still a planet to keep safe. Earth, and the entire galaxy, may have already suffered in the Reaper invasion, but Shepard dared to hope that this would be the last big battle fought for a long while, preferably with the good guys as the victors.

And they moved northward once more.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Visions and Contacts.**

_Two weeks earlier..._

He was having the dream again. The same kind that had been haunting him ever since the Fall of Earth all those months ago. He would always find himself in a burning park forest, with ashes endlessly raining down on his head. The phantom of the little boy he couldn't save kept leading him to a clearing in the trees, where he would turn to face Shepard and catch fire.

Shepard had initially thought the dreams were the effects of guilt after having to flee from Earth during the invasion and leaving its people at the mercy of the Reapers. Then they started becoming more prophetic as he heard whispers of conversations during events that never took place yet, and, the most disturbing vision of all, the image of himself embracing the boy and burning with him.

It wasn't until the end of the war and the activation of the Crucible that Shepard had decided it was Harbinger, the master of the Reapers, trying to indoctrinate him the whole time. When he activated the device that spelled the ancient machine's doom, he thought the nightmares and visions would end, regardless of whether or not they were from guilt or mind-control.

But they did not end. If anything, they became even more horrifying.

In his sleep, Shepard had been following the young boy for a while now, and knew by now they would reach the clearing soon. When they did, the boy ignited in flames as he would always do at this point.

This time, however, the flames spread from the boy's body and burned a circle around their feet, and from there it branched out in eight directions. When Shepard looked about him he would see there was now a symbol - an eight-armed arrow-tipped star - seared into the ground with four other signs at each end of two perpendicular arms:

One was like a glaring stylized skull, its opposite looking something like the combination of the male and female genetic symbols, the third a triad of circles stacked into a pyramid, and the fourth one a ball trailed by flames like a comet.

None of these symbols meant anything to Shepard. He recognized not one of them, but they all stirred some primal fear deep within him, a cold that turned his guts into ice. He knew somehow that these sigils were unimaginably old and hid an ancient evil, worshipped by dark cults comprised of twisted beings. He couldn't figure out what it all meant whenever woke up in a sweat, and was too afraid to tell anyone about them.

That was the new addition to his dreams. Until now.

This time the boy became so heavily engulfed in flames that he disappeared from Shepard's view completely, turning into a raging pillar of fire. That pillar grew, and grew, and grew until it was almost three metres tall. It began to morph and writhe like it was about to descend upon Shepard and devour him as well.

It twisted and curled into bundles of muscle, molded parts to form hands and feet, and carved a head that was like solid heated brass instead of churning fire. Eventually the inferno stopped its shaping and died out, leaving a charred block of cooling black metal in the form it had taken dotted with weak burning embers.

The embers died as well, and the ashes fell away from the metal man. A long red topknot flowed in a breeze that Shepard did not feel from the top of a head as hard as it had looked when it was still burning. Its face was pale as marble, its eyes smoldered with a hatred hotter than the fires that burned them into life.

The man was enormous, like a god of pure evil encased in armor as black as the ash that had covered it, the only difference being the golden trim that was revealed on the massive shoulder guards as well as on other parts of his armor, most noticeably the eight-armed star on his breastplate, similar to the one seared into the ground around them. He did nothing except stare at Shepard with his hateful eyes, and Shepard found he couldn't move from his spot.

It seemed to Shepard that the longer he looked into the man's eyes the more cold his body was feeling, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn't pull his own gaze away from him. The giant man watched him struggle. An slight grin tugged at his thin-lipped mouth until it grew into laughter. At least Shepard thought he was laughing. He couldn't hear anything except a ringing that gradually got louder and turned into a horrible cacophony of noise.

There were shouting and screaming and chanting along with simple, plain talk of conversations that never took place just like in his old nightmares. He recognized the voices of his friends: Garrus Vakarian urgently telling someone to take cover, Liara sobbing over something unknown, Ashley Williams invoking the name of God in horror, Jeff Moreau shouting Shepard's name, and several others whose words Shepard couldn't make out. Mixed with them were throaty metallic voices as well, roaring with insane bloodlust and laughing like inhuman monsters.

The fiery star burned brighter, and the brighter it got, the more it stretched out. It kept stretching until it covered everything Shepard could see, save for the empty space he and the giant occupied in the center. The trees burned, the brush burned, the dirt and rocks and even the grey sky looked like it had caught fire, the flames were so high. The evil man ceased laughing at Shepard's horror, but the grin was still there. He mouthed a sentence to him before everything went black, and though Shepard couldn't hear him, he could read his lips without any trouble and feel the boiling air surrounding him tremble with every word.

_Let the galaxy burn._

* * *

Shepard gasped when he woke up, feeling the draft coming from the window bite at his sweat-drenched body as he instinctively threw himself upright on the bed. Another figure shifted under the covers next to him, and Liara T'Soni turned to face him. She was familiar with her partner's night terrors throughout the Reaper invasion, and their connection was strong enough that they would both wake up at the same time when this happened, though Liara was spared the horrible visions Shepard suffered.

Liara placed a blue outstretched hand against his chest and gently guided him back on the bed. Her arm travelled across his body until it rested in the alcove of his neck and she pulled herself into a hug.

"It was another vision," she stated, not in the form of a question.

Shepard nodded, "They're getting... different." He was not sure of what he saw this time. It was nothing like the old dreams used to be. In those days he had clue of what they meant, but now it was something he couldn't understand.

"Liara," their eyes met, hers filled with empathy, his with uncertainty and a tinge of fear, "Remember when we first met after I found you on Therum? You offered to link our minds together so you could learn about what I saw in the Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime."

She nodded in affirmation of the memory. The Beacon had given Shepard images of the Protheans' downfall when the Reapers came for them almost fifty-thousand years ago. Liara was just a young university graduate in way over her head studying ancient Prothean artifacts. Her curiosity had gotten the best of her on Therum and if it weren't for Shepard, she would have been dead a long time ago. But when she discovered that he actually had contact with a Prothean Beacon and survived spectacularly, she admitted she found him more than a little intriguing, and so asked to "investigate" his mind.

She also remembered how much it took out of her in doing so. She was much stronger now, but i had been a while since Therum.

"I'm thinking now," Shepard continued, "We should try it again, but this time for my dreams."

Liara looked at him inquisitively. "What would that solve? The Reapers are gone... right?"

"It's not the Reapers I'm worried about, Liara. It's something else. There was something else in this dream I and couldn't make anything of it. I can't explain it."

"And you think I can?"

Shepard gave her the same look of uncertainty and fear, but with more pleading. "At least try. If only to prove it's nothing and help me sleep better."

Liara sighed and nodded in agreement. She closed her eyes, lifted a blue leg over Shepard's and straddled his waist. She leaned in close to him so their foreheads were together like they were about to kiss.

She inhaled. "Get ready." When she opened her eyes, they were like black coals.

"Embrace Eternity."

In moments, in flashes of light and color, Liara saw everything: the burning boy, the unholy star devouring the earth, and especially the giant embodiment of evil. They were only momentary glimpses, but they were all so terrible, and Liara was filled with an unspeakable pain. It was like something was trying to tear into her skull and consume her soul, and her mind cried out in an agony she never thought possible of feeling.

When she pulled away from Shepard, she realized she had been screaming for real.

* * *

_Citadel flagship _Destiny Ascension_, orbiting Earth..._

Ensign Ulbara checked her monitor again. Surely there was something wrong with the scanning system? See looked at the screen and still wasn't sure if what she was seeing was real or due to some malfunction. It wasn't unheard of these days since the battle to retake Earth from the Reapers, as many ships were damaged in the fighting, the_ Destiny Ascension_ especially. A loose conduit in the bowels of the massive dreadnought might have finally been severed completely before the technicians had repaired it.

She called Matriarch Lidanya, the ship's captain and the commanding officer on the deck, to come to her monitor, just to get her opinion of what was happening. "Ma'am," Ulbara began, "I'm sure it's nothing, probably a glitch in the system, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before." Lidanya leaned over the ensign's shoulder to get a closer look at her computer.

"You did the right thing, Ensign," she said, "It's always good to be careful with things like this, especially now." What the Matriarch left out was she just as stumped as Ulbara was. The early warning scanner showed all contacts in the system all the way up until the halo asteroid belt that surrounded it. To some, I may seem like paranoia to keep a look out for invaders so soon after the Reapers were defeated, but to the fleets that had faced them only weeks ago, paranoia seemed the better option than death. There was still the risk of pirates from the Terminus systems who might think it an opportune time to raid worlds made vulnerable by the ancient machines, or, goddess forbid, Reaper stragglers coming late to the scene of the final battle. True, the captain thought to herself, it's always good to be careful.

What the scanner showed now, however, certainly was something not even the honored Matriarch could make sense of. Apparently there was an incalculable surge of energy near the planet Mars, the fourth from the system's star. The ship's VI classified it as a black hole, but there was no pulling of any matter into its center, and it was much smaller than a black hole would normally be. That, and these sorts of things don't just appear out of nowhere in a matter of minutes.

Lidanya's eyes were glued to the screen as if expecting the answers to all her questions to type themselves out in front of her. "That thing is close to one of our pickets. Contact them and confirm that there is something out there." Ensign Ulbara switched to the stellar communications system with a "Yes, Ma'am."

"This is _Destiny Ascension_ to Mars picket fleet; we are picking up a large fluctuation of energy in your sector, please confirm visual." The other line fizzed with static before opening up its reply.

"_Where the fuck did they come from!?"_

Lidanya and Ulbara exchanged a quick horrified glance at one another while the line went back to static. "Say again, Mars picket, what's happening?"

"_Contact! Multiple contacts! Jesus, there's hundreds of them!"_

The scanner showed absolutely nothing in that sector except the blob of energy. Perhaps whatever the Mars picket found were using some sort of jamming device to hide their forces? That didn't explain how they made it this deep in the system without being picked up. This time Matriarch Lidanya spoke into the mic. "Mars fleet, are you in contact with Reaper ships?"

"_They're not Reapers. I—I don't know who they are!" _The line crackled with white noise for a moment before coming back up, _"—re fucking huge! We can't hold them; we're falling back to Earth."_

Lidanya turned her attention back to Ulbara. "Call up the rest of the allied fleet in-system and tell them to rally back here immediately, and that unknown enemy contact has been made over at Sector-4." She looked at the monitor again. Who the hell were these people and how did they get here? Sol's Mass Relay was located near Pluto, the satellite furthest from the sun, but there were no Element Zero disturbances that could be seen in that area, as if the newcomers didn't use it to get here. Even the Reapers needed the relays to travel from system to system, yet somehow these new contacts had found a way to make a jump into the middle of a system without the need for Mass Effect technology.

When Ulbara was finished, Lidanya flipped the comms switch again to the picket's frequency. "Mars Fleet, link up your video feeds to ours." A minute later they were almost blinded when the monitor switched from the system scanner to a somewhat hazy stern-side view of a rapidly retreating Alliance frigate.

Without a doubt, the energy surge the scanner had picked up was very, very real. From end to end, the entire feed was covered with an insurmountably large swirling purple vortex, like a twisted black hole from another dimension. Unlike a black hole, though, instead of swallowing light and matter into its maw, there were hundreds of black shapes spewing from of it like a spilled cup of water. Lidanya zoomed in for a more detailed look and saw they were ships, hundreds of ships of classes she couldn't recognize.

The _Destiny Ascension_ is the largest vessel known in Citadel space, the size of several Alliance dreadnoughts and wielded the firepower of the entire Asari navy combined. It was the veteran of the Geth assault on the Citadel itself and was an instrumental force in lifting the siege of Earth from the Reapers, as well as fighting in a dozen other battles all over the galaxy in that same conflict. It was a truly unparalleled engine of war.

Yet Matriarch Lidanya, the venerable ship's captain and master, felt her heart sink when she saw the raider fleet that was gathering around Mars. These vessels were more than huge; they were _gargantuan_, of a scale like something only comprehendible in a madman's dreams. They resembled ancient, impossibly tall fortresses kilometers long, complete with towers that literally bristled with guns. There were battlements and buttresses, a citadel at the stern, smaller bunkers, bastions, ravelins, and every other form of fortification in history. These weren't ships in the sense that Lidanya and the rest of the galaxy knew them; these were literal castles sitting on top of engines. The Matriarch tried to calculate the number of crew members each one must hold, and abandoned the thought as useless. There had to be tens of thousands manning them at the least.

And there were hundreds of them in the fleet.

"What—um, what do we do now, Ma'am?" Lidanya met Ulbara's glassy stare. She could easily become like her, frozen with terror and awe and incapable of making a decision, but Matriarch Lidanya, captain and master of the _Destiny Ascension_, had fought the Reapers- the doom of the galaxy- and emerged victorious, and if they could be beaten, so could these things, no matter how big they were.

"Matriarch Lidanya!" one of the comms officers called out from the other side of the bridge, "We have an incoming transmission from the bogey fleet."

"Put it through."

The deep, garbled, metallic noise that came through the receiver could hardly be called a voice. It was like all that was evil in the universe was focused into this one message.

"_Sumus inordinatio. Iudicium tuum sumus et perditionem. Læténtur cæli urit!"_

"Someone translate that into Citadel common, now."

From what the comms officer told Lidanya, the message was in an ancient dialect of Earth Latin. So these people are humans, she thought. Where did they come from and how did they amass such an enormous fleet? There were humans known to reside in the lawless parts of the Terminus systems, but not even if that entire section of the galaxy put all their warships together could they form a flotilla this large, and they definitely didn't own anything like these vessels.

"Play the translated message, if you will." The officer nodded and complied. The results were no less terrifying.

"_We are Chaos. We are your doom and destruction. Let the galaxy burn!"_


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Let Them Come.**_  
_

_Later that day..._

Liara woke up to a bright light in a white room. The air had a cold sterile feel, and her experience told her she was in an infirmary. She had a moment of _deja vu_ when she remembered how she ended up in the same position the very first time her mind had joined Shepard's. In those instances, however, she would walk herself to the infirmary. This time she suspected she had to be carried there.

"Well, good morning, my dear," Liara heard the soothingly maternal voice of Karin Chakwas, the resident doctor of Shepard's crew, "I see you missed being in my office all these years, am I correct?" Dr. Chakwas gave her that warm smile everyone loved her for. Despite not actually being on his ship at the moment, such was the loyalty Shepard commanded from his people that the doctor followed him planetside along with several other members once the fighting was over. Liara could count herself among them, but she joined Shepard for slightly different reasons.

Liara didn't try raising herself up from the bed. Her head was swirling like from a terrible hangover from last night. It never hurt this badly all the other times she delved into Shepard's mind, and she wished to go back to sleep if only the splitting headache didn't keep her awake. She tried to recall what she saw in his dreams that made her black out in unconsciousness but couldn't seem to remember. Rather, she remembered _remembering _perfectly, but her mind subconsciously tried to shut the image out of memory, just like when her mother died, or when she watched Shepard jettisoned into space...

What she did remember, were the emotions that led her to lock the memory in a proverbial vault: She felt afraid, firstly, and it was always a good reason to shut away something that terrified you. Mostly it was the pain, though. She did recall the horrible pain in her soul that drove her out of consciousness, like someone or something was trying to tear her open from the inside and wear her body like a second skin.

She worried about Shepard for a moment before she remembered how much stronger his will was compared to hers, how he would always be perfectly fine when they melded while she would need to rest, and how he survived contact with the Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime. Even his terrible nightmares didn't give him any trouble aside from guilt or fear.

Speaking of whom, where was he now, Liara wondered? He always came to check up on her when this happened, something she came to love him for in the early days of their adventures. But when she found the strength to shift her head to look around the room there was only herself and Chakwas. When she asked the doctor about him, her pleasant smile faded into a worried frown.

"He came in here earlier to see if you were awake yet but was called to the briefing room upstairs and, seeing you were still sleeping, thought it was best to go."

Liara thought something was the matter. She and Shepard became closely connected enough so that there was a sort of psychic empathy between them, thanks to Liara's Asari genes. That, as well as the fact that he would have still been here with her had something important not come up. She could still feel a trace of him from where she was, like a scent that trailed from where he was standing in the room above her to the bed she was laying in. There was a hint of fear, but it was the expectant kind, like he had a premonition of what was happening the night before. Which of course he did, which was the reason she was here in the first place. Otherwise, she and Shepard would still be in bed…

* * *

_[We are Chaos. We are your doom and destruction. Let the galaxy burn!]_

The recording _The_ _Destiny Ascension_ had received played on a loop in the briefing room for a while.

_[We are Chaos. We are your doom and destruction. Let the galaxy burn!]_

The motives of this group called "Chaos" were clear: war. The moment they came out of that freaky wormhole next to Mars they attacked the picket fleet stationed there. The picket took heavy losses in the withering opening barrage and it was only their timely retreat that prevented their total annihilation.

Exactly what Chaos was, however, was not so clear. Some of the Navy officers theorized they were a conglomerate of Terminus pirates and raiders, others as a long-lost colony of humans from the early days of Human space colonization. A couple even agreed that this was a fleet from a different dimension entirely, but such notions were all but laughed at by the rest of the board.

_[We are Chaos. We are your doom and destruction. Let the galaxy burn!]_

"So what do they want?" Every chair in the briefing room was occupied, and Shepard, thanks to his universal reputation as the savior of the galaxy, sat front and center before the viewscreens. There were two screens, one blank and the other with a digital map of the Sol system. Next to him was Ashley Williams, a Council SPECTRE and Alliance hero, almost as beatified as Shepard was after the war and also deserved a seat in the briefing.

Admiral Steven Hackett, the head of the Human Alliance military, darted a glance at Shepard for a moment before nodding to the officer in the corner holding the viewscreen remote. The officer pressed a button to change one of the screens from the Alliance Navy emblem on a blue field to a recording of the attack on Mars which had happened less than two hours ago.

"This was taken from a reconnaissance drone left behind by the Mars picket fleet when they retreated back here. The bogies didn't try to pursue and instead ran scans of the planet," Hackett gestured to the dark shapes that surrounded the red planet like flies on a rotting carcass. The size of the invading fleet was astounding in itself, let alone the size of each individual ship. Some of them exceeded eight kilometers. Shepard was reminded of the Quarian fleet: a flotilla of migratory ships numbering in the tens of thousands. Perhaps these people wanted to colonize the system and brought with them their entire population like the Quarians. But whereas the Migrant Fleet consisted of thousands of ships, hardly a fraction of them were military grade vessels. This new unknown fleet, it seemed, was made up entirely of hundreds of massive warships, each larger than a few dreadnoughts. It was more like a galactic-scale invasion.

Ash spoke up, "What could they be looking for there? The Martian facilities have been abandoned ever since the war. There's nothing but empty labs and hab units." True, Shepard thought. The laboratories were themselves valuable for different reasons, but there was nothing worth sending a raiding fleet that large to find it.

"Have they tried to operate the labs? Or maybe they want to use the planet as a staging point for an attack on Earth?" Hackett shook his head.

"There have been few landing parties from what we could tell. Most headed for the labs, yes, but they quickly left like there was nothing worth their time. What's more, we've intercepted some of their ship-to-ship transmissions and came up with this."

He nodded again and this time when the officer pushed a button on the remote, a garbled throaty message came through.

_[Ub- est? Ubi sunt exesa cam-is et officinas?]_

_[Domin- non invenit. Non sunt ibi...]_

_[Quomodo p-st totius Mechanicu- iustus evanescunt?! Aliquis hoc mihi ostende!]_

Shepard felt the air chill and looked about him to see if any of the room's other occupants noticed the sudden drop in temperature. No one looked to be in discomfort, and Shepard realized it wasn't the atmosphere that got colder. What was it about that voice that sounded familiar?

"What does it mean? The transmission, that is."

Hackett pulled out a data slate from his pocket. "From what we could translate, they were apparently looking for something on the surface but couldn't find it, and they're very confused by its absence. And very angry too."

"That name one of them mentioned," said Shepard, "'Mechanicus.' What is that, some sort of factory?"

"We're not sure, but other messages imply that there should have been forges and factories covering the planet's surface. Where they got that idea, we don't know. One theory is they've stumbled into the wrong system and are wondering why nothing is where it should be. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, there have never been any factories on Mars aside from the machine shops attached to the labs."

"So are they here for Earth or just this?" Shepard wasn't convinced that was the end of it. Like he figured before, there were just too damn many of them to invade just one world, and it was common knowledge the Alliance Navy was seriously depleted during the war. To the bolder Terminus pirates, Earth would seem like a ripe target for raiding. Every Navy officer in the room could think of a few names off the tops of their heads of people who would've liked to see humanity ground to dust.

"Again, we can't be sure. We're gathering all our allied fleets in-system here at Earth. Hopefully that will make them hesitate before staging an attack." Slim chance at that. Nothing the combined forces of the Alliance, Turians, Asari, and Salarians could muster in the Sol system would match the strength of the invaders. "But we should all assume that they will come here eventually and make the necessary preparations for when they do."

"What about the other Citadel forces?" said one officer in the back, "We could still call for reinforcements."

Hackett shook his head. "Everyone else is preoccupied with protecting their own homeworlds. The Asari have already been generous enough to leave the _Destiny Ascension_ here after most of their forces were annihilated at Thessia. Everyone else that could be spared from the Turian and Salarian navies is already with us."

_And the Krogan are busy re-populating their worlds, the Geth are still being rebuilt by the Quarians who have their new world to settle on and so scrapped most of their old ships for supplies, and the Rachni are nowhere to be found,_ Shepard calculated in his head. _So we're all alone for the most part._

"How many ships can we gather all together?"

"All together? About one-hundred and two. Definitely not enough, which is why I'm having them perform hit-and-run attacks on the hostile fleet."

Ashley nearly bolted up from her seat. "But while they're doing that, Earth will be left wide open for them when they get here, and then—"

"—And then it wouldn't be any different than if we kept all the ships we had left to stay and be massacred in opening minutes of the siege," Hackett gave Williams a steely glare, "At least this way we can pick at the enemy enough to divert his attention or even do some damage. I won't lie to you, people; we wouldn't last in a stand-up fight against this fleet with what we have."

Ash crossed her arms. Shepard could feel her pain; it was hardly two months since the two of them were forced to leave Earth behind when it was invaded by the Reapers, and although they weren't necessarily doing the same thing this time, allowing the Alliance fleet to leave Earth defenseless again didn't sit well with either of them.

"And how long until they get here?" Hackett gestured to the map and magnified the space between Mars and Earth.

"A matter of hours, if their drive cores are as powerful as we expect they'd be on ships of those sizes, but that's if they started travelling right now. For the moment, they seem content where they are."

A few hours were frighteningly little time to prepare for a war on a planetary scale, but they had faced worse odds before and prevailed. Shepard recalled the days when he tried desperately to convince the Alliance and the other Council races about the imminent Reaper onslaught, but nobody seemed to believe him nor wanted to. Then, when Harbinger's forces did finally attack, Earth fought an insurgency war against them and was more successful than anyone could have hoped. Back then they had no time at all to prepare. Being given whole hours to make ready was a godsend.

Then Shepard saw it.

"Hold up." It was all it took to keep himself from jumping out of his chair. "Magnify the ship closest to the camera." With another nod from Hackett, the image zoomed to a higher resolution on one of the giant warships. Just as Shepard suspected: An eight-armed star tipped with arrow points was inlaid over the ship's prow. Shepard hadn't felt a horror so deeply since he watched the Reapers descend upon Earth during the invasion.

_[We are Chaos. We are your doom and destruction. Let the galaxy burn!]_

An image of a giant in black and gold armor mouthing a silent sentence popped up in his mind.

_Let the galaxy burn._

It all made sense now; the dreams and the terror he felt in looking at the burning symbols in the ground, the voice in the recording… Although he never actually heard him in the dream, Shepard could easily imagine one of the speakers in the intercepted transmissions to come from the evil giant in black armor. Was he leading this warband? Did Shepard's visions come to reality so soon?

He heard a whispered voice next to him. "Commander, are you alright?" Ashley was speaking to him, and he realized he was hunched over and sweating profusely, his chest heaving quick, deep breaths. "…Skipper?" His vision blurred slightly, and when he lifted his head up he saw everyone's eyes were on him.

He woozily rose from his seat, and Ashley caught him by the shoulder when he almost keeled over. "I'm sorry, Admiral Hackett, would you please excuse me?" The Admiral gave him a look of confused concern and nodded, and Shepard quickly went to leave. He needed air.

"Do you need me to come with you?" he heard Ashley ask as he started walking out of the room. He shook his head.

Shepard stumbled through the door that led to the balcony outside and nearly tripped off the edge but for the cement railing keeping him from doing so. His head finally steadied after a couple minutes of breathing the cool evening air. As he stood there leaning on the railing, Shepard took in the view spread out in front of him.

All of Earth suffered during the Reaper invasion, but Shepard had always thought London took the worst beating of any other major city. Some of the more brutal and desperate fighting took place there as the forces of every race in the alliance gathered for the final battle against Harbinger, and so everything both sides had were focused in one place for the first time in the war. Hardly a building was left standing, and much less were spared any damage, be it light or severe. In the weeks following the cataclysmic end of the war, humanity wasted no time rebuilding their world. There weren't even any parades or celebrations to mark their victory. The cost had been too far great, and though everyone was happy the war was finally over, nobody considered it to be a particularly happy ending.

As it was, London had the look of someone who was horribly sick, but was on his way to a full recovery. Pocked and broken streets were repaved, skyscrapers erected to replace what had been leveled, and more notably, people were returning to their homes, albeit, much of the houses will be left vacant for a while.

As Shepard looked at it all and thought about the new invaders, he felt a deep sadness. Earth had just begun healing after one terrible war, and already it was about to be ravaged by another. Is this how it would be from now on, one war after the other? Did the people of this planet long ago foresee any of this when they launched the first ship into space? Would they have even tried setting foot in the void if they knew that, in the grim darkness of the far future, there was only war?

Shepard was shaken from his reverie by the sound of the door creaking open behind him and the padding of light footsteps. He knew who it was without turning to look. Her presence was calming.

"Aren't you cold out here, John?" Liara's mellifluous voice was like a soothing balm for his mind. He turned around to see her blue eyes with that same expression she tended to make so often these days. She was always worried about him and it struck Shepard as ironic; in the months when they first met, it was he who would always look after her. Nowadays it seemed the roles were reversed.

"Aren't you supposed to be resting?" he replied. It was true, she was a bit groggy-eyed and unbalanced with exhaustion, but she still came up to find him. She knew he would do the same for her and more.

"I felt you from downstairs."

Shepard tried making a humorous grin to lighten the mood. "I'm that bad, huh?"

"I haven't seen you this troubled since the night before the battle for Earth. It's the dream, isn't it?" Shepard winced at the mention of the vision, and the face of the armored giant flashed in his mind for a heartbeat. "I know. I've seen it too, remember? It was horrible, but you must remember that your old dreams during the war meant nothing after all. We won in the end. We can get through this together, whatever your visions might mean."

Now Shepard's smile really was genuine. This was why he loved Liara T'Soni so much; she would always be there for him, whether he was chasing rogue SPECTREs, fighting Collectors, or battling the Reapers. She was the force of nature, the reason he kept fighting no matter the odds. So long as she was with him and still loved him back, everything will be alright.

Shepard recalled an ancient Earth saying: _'Being loved deeply by someone gives you strength. Loving someone deeply gives you courage.'_

In that case let "Chaos" come, Shepard thought, I am both loved and in love deeply, so I will win.

He pulled his love close until their lips touched.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Let the Galaxy Burn**

_Orbiting Mars..._

Throughout the hall could be heard the thumping of the warrior's heavy boots as he walked at a hurried pace towards a group of his compatriots standing before a massive bronze door. There were four warriors in all, including him, and for a few seconds after he had reached them not one said a word to the other, only communicating in the worried glances they shared. They nodded as if in telepathic agreement before the newcomer spoke.

"Has he come out of there at all?"

The foremost warrior, a comparatively young one but no less aware of the situation for it, shook his head gravely. "He hasn't so much as made a sound that we could hear once we shut the doors," he replied, "Much less come out. This whole ordeal has raised his choler, Sabine, so much that it's made him… _calm_, like a star after it collapses into itself."

"This whole ordeal has us all with raised choler, boy," Sabine sighed and rubbed his forehead with the palm of his gauntleted hand, "But him most of all. So much depends on him as it is. Be thankful he hasn't directed his frustration on us instead of secluding himself in prayer like this."

The younger warrior nodded. "What should we do, though? The other Legions are growing impatient, and soon everyone in the Crusade fleet will hear about this."

He was right, Sabine knew. Their master's absence will be noticed after so long, and it would do nothing for his reputation if everyone thought he hid himself in the shrine room after hearing the disturbing news. Some of the other warlords in the fleet, taking this as a sign of weakness, may leave the Crusade as quickly as they would turn the guns of their own ships against it. This could not be allowed to happen.

"The Warmaster merely prays for victory, and we are keeping vigil. This is what you will tell anyone who asks, understand?" The youths nodded their acknowledgement, and the four of them spread out in a line across the width of the doors.  
"And for the Gods' sakes, stay calm." Sabine winced as the bead of sweat that drooped from the end of his nose finally fell onto his already dewed gorget.

* * *

He could have been mistaken for a mountain of black and gold ceramite as he knelt before the altar. Four wide banners of skin flayed and sewn together from a hundred men hung limply like gruesome drapes from the high ceiling to the black marble-tiled floor; one blood-soaked and bearing an iconic red skull, another with a disturbing hybrid of the two gender signs, the other a stack of three rotted holes, and the last a falling comet that seemed to burn with an inner flame that could only be seen from the edge of one's vision.

The altar itself was the centerpiece of a vast sigil of brass raised from the marble floor in the shape of a star with eight arms splayed across the octagonal-shaped room from end to end. It was little more than a squat pillar, about a meter high, made from the same black substance as the rest of the room and adorned with blackened skulls in alcoves hewn into it. The top of the pillar formed a dip like a bowl which funneled into a hole going down its center.

In truth, the entire room was an altar of sorts. A grand yet simple temple to the Dark Powers, with everything in it complimenting each other, from the altar and the star to the banners and all the other collections of unholy icons that hung from the eight walls.

"What would you have me do?" the dark giant spoke in a low, deep whisper without raising his eyes from the tiles, "Have I not given everything I am to you? Have I sacrificed so much all these millennia just so I would be thrown away like this?"

His sorcerers tell him that there is nothing, as do all of his Navigators, the men who should be most in tune with the Warp. They tell him that they have lost sight of the Great Eye of the galaxy, the roiling tempest that was home to the numberless legions of Chaos. The Eye of Terror was simply _not there_, they said_._ The gateway to the Warp had never existed. As to how this was possible, none could tell him. There was only an empty, bleak swirl of colorless stars that served as a pale galaxy.

There were tales of ships that were supposedly expelled from the Warp and found themselves in a different universe, one completely alien to them. Those who do not know the Warp like the men of Chaos do, the Imperial mongrels for example, would say they are only tales and that if the poor victims really were stranded, then how would the story get around in the first place?

This man knew better, though. The Gods spoke to him directly in a fashion even the mightiest sorcerers would be envious of, and he knew the Gods were capricious entities. Few mortals held any value to them, so the rest were all subject to their whims and dark amusement. Tossing a helpless space vessel into another dimension and feeling the despair of her crew would probably make them piss themselves in laughter. He wondered if they were laughing now.

"I have done everything you asked of me. I succeeded my father. I took his mantle as Warmaster, I took his armies, I took his favor that you once bore him… I even tore his gauntlet from his corpse when _his_ father struck him down!" He raised above his head the gauntlet of twitching golden talons that covered his right hand, still keeping his gaze low. "I burned entire worlds in your name! I have spilt more blood during my reign than even mighty An'ggrath. I have agents spreading the vilest plagues imaginable to every corner of the galaxy. I have entire worlds dedicated to excess in all its forms, and all this has brought great change to the galaxy throughout the millennia!" He lifted his head up from the floor, his red topknot brushing away from his face, which had sorrow replace rage for the first time in thousands of years.

"More I will do, though all I have done must already be worth something."

He focused on the banners behind the altar expectantly, but when the Gods did not respond, he bowed his head in defeat, and would have wept in bitterness had his tears not been burned away with his loyalty to the Imperium ten thousand years ago.

_Poor, poor Warmaster…_

A voice slid along his brain like a cold, wet blade, and he could do nothing while it still spoke but listen in rapture.

'_Do you despair, for your masters have abandoned you? Oh, you poor mortal. You are supposed to be our Chosen, and yet you cannot even see what we have planned for you, our most prodigal son. Let us show you your manifest destiny so that you will never doubt our devotion to you…'_

The room swirled around the giant like water being sucked down a drain before his eyes until there was nothing but inky blackness. He knew this was all taking place in his mind, nothing more than an illusion, but it felt more like a waking dream. He felt his gut lurch with movement, and suddenly he was falling. Or was he flying? His body hadn't moved from its kneeling position, but the floating sensation was still there.

A light, little more than a pinprick of white in the blackness, flashed into life, and quickly grew until it burst into a cluster of stars. Each dot kept growing individually, and soon he could see different features on each one; spiraling rays of light made up of even more pinpricks, and those made of _even more._ The giant floated past the collection of galaxies straight towards one in particular which seemed to be the center of them all. The drops of white became stars burning red, yellow, and blue as he streaked by, and when he thought he would go blind with all the light flashing about his eyes, his flight halted before a sphere of blue and green.

His long memory brought him back to a time when he was young, a time when he had still loved the Emperor, and his father Horus still lived. Long ago, the Master of Mankind led his once-favored son to a catacomb deep below the surface of a long-forgotten world. There engraved on the wall of an ancient temple was a work of art fashioned into the image of a map. The map showed unfamiliar green continents with white ice caps and azure oceans. The significance was lost on him, and he figured it could be some map of just any planet in the galaxy. The Emperor, however, knew exactly what planet the engraving depicted. Holy Terra, - but as it was millennia before the Imperium- when mankind had just begun travelling amongst the stars, before constant war reduced the beautiful world to desert with its seas boiled away and the atmosphere filled with ash.

This was the world he saw now with wide eyes, and the giant didn't think he could speak out of amazement even if he wanted to.

'_This is our boon to you, sweet child,'_ the voices purred again, '_The galaxy could not be conquered as you knew it in your own time, so we have brought you to when mankind was weak. Take Terra in its youth, and victory for Chaos will be assured for the rest of eternity and more.'_

A burst of flame erupted from the green and blue surface and branched out into eight scorching fingers until each end met another on the other side of the planet; the mark of Chaos burning its way across Terra at last.

A sudden crack like thunder pulled the giant out of the vision. He was kneeling before the dark altar once again, but the room seemed to be getting darker. The air thickened, and the giant could feel a warm wetness touch his lips, and he was rewarded with a copper taste when he licked at them with his tongue. By the time the air thickened into a black fog, his face – the only bare spot on his body – felt drenched with it, and he raised a hand to his eyes to see it covered in red.

_Blood._

The air was filled with blood! A chuckle escaped the giant's lips. The fog of gore began to focus into a steady stream that splashed into the bowl on the altar, and then spilled out of the eyes of its black skulls, flooding the marble floor. The giant chuckled again, and then laughed like a maniac as he held out his cupped hands to catch the contents of the flowing fountain and drank it greedily, letting the coppery tang slide down his throat.

"_This is what I will do to all the innocents on Terra,"_ he thought before gulping another mouthful of red.

* * *

The great brass doors groaned on their massive hinges as they slowly opened inwardly, at once hushing the low murmur of voices. By now, hundreds of warriors had gathered before it, easily filling the once spacious hall with their black armored bodies, all of them curious and worried about the Warmaster. Sabine and the young group of men still stood directly in front of the portal, never leaving their spot since their master had disappeared through them hours before. Now every single head, helmeted and bare, ceased conversation and turned towards the growing crack between the doors.

A giant of gold and black stepped through the dark crack with the light of the hall illuminating him, his lips and topknot soaked and dripping with blood and his eyes wild with triumph. Even with so many warriors squeezed in the space, the giant's voice echoed through the hall like a thunderstorm.

"_Brothers!_" he roared, "_Who will burn Terra to the ground with me?_"

If the giant's voice was a thunderstorm, the hundreds of throats that bellowed in reply, with their fists and swords in the air, created a hurricane of rejoicing and approval; rejoicing for their master's return, and approval for the blood and carnage that would be had by it.

Sabine watched the Warmaster's eyes level with his, and he grinned warmly, and the old warrior could not help but return it. "Captain Sabine DuCard," he said, "Would you come with me? I cannot fuck all of the Emperor's whores alone!" The hurricane of voices rose again in hooting laughter.

"My Lord, I am too old for both ravishing and pillaging at the same time: I only have strength for one or the other!" This time the Warmaster burst into laughter.

"Then I'll decide what to do with you when we reach Terra, how is that?"

Sabine curtly bowed his head in approval. "That suits me just fine, Lord, thank you."

The Warmaster strode down the hall, his warriors parting to make way for him by pressing their bodies together more than they already were. "My warriors. My brothers, I would have you _all_ come with me. The slaughter and glory will not be so sweet if I had no one to share it with." The cheer was deafening.

"The Gods have given us the unparalleled honor of being the first to conquer the galaxy, but I will not stop there. Oh no, let the entire _universe_ know that we are coming for it. Let all know that I, Abaddon the Despoiler, Lord of the Black Legion and Chosen of Chaos, am coming for it!"

The warriors of the Black Legion chanted his name.

_Abaddon!_

_Abaddon!_

_Abaddon!_

The Master of Chaos raised his talons in the air. "For Chaos!"

_For Chaos!_

"Let the galaxy burn!"

_Let the galaxy burn!_

_LET THE GALAXY BURN!_


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: The Nature of Chaos**

The man was enormous, at least two and a half meters tall and almost half as wide around the chest. Shepard had to lift his head to look him in the face, and knew a prolonged conversation was going to strain his neck something terrible.

"Pardon?" he asked.

The stranger cocked his head slightly as if in curiosity. "You are Commander Shepard." It was a statement, not a question. Shepard answered yes regardless. The giant of a man nodded introspectively before he continued, like the knowledge confirmed something in his mind. "You are part of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, and known throughout the Milky Way as the Savior of the Galaxy."

"Yes, is there something can I help you with? I really need to be somewhere right now."

"Oh, actually I am here to help _you_, Commander."

"Me?" Shepard studied the man's clothing. They were clearly civilian, but something in the way that he wore them made them seem more militaristic than they should have been, like a soldier out of uniform. They were plain, otherwise, without so much as a brand name on his shirt. In fact, there was little about this man's features, other than his size, that would make him stand out in a crowd. "Who are you? Are you a Marine or a civilian?"

The man's face had been neutral throughout the conversation, never betraying any hint of emotion until now when the tiniest and most ironic smile tugged at the edge of his thin-lipped mouth. "Marine."

Shepard's tone hardened. "Then why aren't you in your battle dress uniform, trooper? The Alliance military is on high alert and every Marine should be ready for action. What's your rank?"

"As I said, Commander," the man continued, ignoring Shepard's questions, "I am here to help you and make sure there will still be people around to call you 'Savior.'" He drew a PDA from inside his jacket and extended it in offering towards Shepard. "Read it."

Shepard took the slate and unfolded it with a push of the power button and watched as the holo screen glowed orange as it came to life. He looked back up at the stranger. "It needs a passcode."

The man nodded. "The code is the answer to this riddle: 'The Legion is known as the Beginning, not the End.' That should be easy enough to figure out, Commander." And with that, the man turned to leave.

"Who the hell are you?" Shepard called out to the man after contemplating the riddle for a moment.

"I am Alpharius," the giant man replied without losing stride, "And I expect we will see each other again today, Commander… That is, if you are who they tell me."

Alpharius stepped into a shadow cast by the sunset, and when Shepard blinked in confusion the man was gone like he was never even there. Shepard blinked again, harder, and then shook his head to clear his vision. He glanced at the glowing PDA in his hand to make sure it was real along with everything else that just happened in the last three minutes.

_What did he mean by that?_ he asked himself, thinking on the man's last words before he disappeared. He turned his head to the sun. The sky was purple above an orange horizon where the sun sat. The day was almost out, and by Alpharius' tone, something was going down right now, and Shepard had to figure out the passcode if he wanted to get to the bottom of it in time.

* * *

_I can't be certain, Shepard. I'll find what I can on the extranet and any other database available to me, but not even AI's can solve riddles accurately one hundred percent of the time, especially if they were made up by someone recently without it or the answer being recorded yet. However, a riddle's roots may often be found in a species' culture, and it may be possible to find clues there._

"Thanks, EDI," Shepard spoke into his Omni-tool, "That's all I can ask for. Just let me know when you find something." He was about to switch off the holographic glove covering his left arm when the line to the_ Normandy_ chimed again.

_I have found something._

Shepard smiled and chuckled at his own surprise: EDI was an artificial intelligence, a living computer for all intents and purposes. She had probably already scanned through the entire extranet five times in as many seconds.

Shepard glanced cautiously over his shoulder before replying. "Give it to me."

_Your new acquaintance's riddle was _'The Legion is known as the Beginning, not the End.'_ I found an excerpt from an old human religious document known as _Revelations _that goes _'I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.'_ Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet respectively._

_Since the 'Legion' is not known as the end, it must be called alpha instead of omega, which makes sense, as the man's name is supposedly Alpharius. Therefore, my guess is that the answer may be 'Alpha Legion,' or some variation. Again, I may not be one hundred percent accurate._

"That's okay, EDI. It's a better guess than anything I could've come up with." Shepard tapped the PDA open and entered EDI's answer. He almost chuckled again when the confirmation symbol lit up on the display.

The orange homepage changed to dark blue and a line of white text appeared.

[Go to the Esoteric Church of the Fourth Sacrament before 7:00 PM. Be armed and expect anything. Bring only your most loyal men. Inform no one else. Trust no one else.]

Shepard stared at the holo screen in confusion and annoyance. Who the hell was this guy and what was this Esoteric Church? And who did he think he was to try and give Shepard orders without so much as an explanation when there was an invasion fleet one planet away? He was a Commander of the Alliance Marine Corps and an N7 at that, as well as a Council SPECTRE. There were very few people in the galaxy who could confidently tell him what to do, and even fewer below his station whom he respected well enough to take orders from.

This Alpharius couldn't be one of Hackett's men, since the Admiral could simply contact Shepard personally via comms or encrypted messages –none of which needed to be accessed with a riddle. He wasn't the kind of officer who would send a lackey to be a paper boy.

But what if this man was right, Shepard wondered, and maybe something important was going to happen at that time? Maybe he isn't one of Hackett's, but he could be some secret Alliance intelligence operative he didn't know about. Three years ago, Shepard learned of a race of sentient doom-machines bent on wiping out the better part of the galaxy. Never in his life had he expected to fight something like that, much less come out of it as the greatest hero in the histories of almost every living thing in the Milky Way.

It was just the timing of it all that got Shepard thinking, though: out of nowhere comes this monstrous fleet of warships that looked like they were from another reality entirely only weeks after the end of the war with the Reapers, and then, a few hours later, a giant man comes and hands Shepard a message that could only be read after solving a riddle. It could be that the Esoteric Church was the place to be to get to the bottom of this invasion.

He activated his omni-tool again. "EDI, I need you to look-up and locate the Esoteric Church of the Fourth Sacrament in London, and call up James and Liara. Tell them to meet me in front of the compound with their gear ready," Shepard thought for a moment, "And if I'm not back before morning, inform Admiral Hackett about this Church and Alpharius."

_Of course, Shepard._ and the line went silent.

Shepard glanced at the chronometer on his omni-tool: 4:41 PM. He had less than two-and-a-half hours to get this done. It would be easier if the instructions weren't so vague, Shepard thought, since Alpharius didn't even mention what he would be up against. For all he knew, Shepard was about to take on a Reaper man-to-machine, and he'd be headed right for it.

* * *

The ground car rolled down Main Street, reflecting passing street lights off its tinted windshield. For whole blocks, Shepard could not see any pedestrians on the road: when the Alliance military was put on high alert, the civilians, not surprisingly, retreated back into their homes or gathered in shelters. Nobody wanted to repeat the carnage of the Reaper invasion by being caught out in the open. Those who did stay home kept their lights out and shades closed, and with the scarring that remained on the roads and structures after the war, the city looked like a cold graveyard.

If EDI was correct – and of course, she was – the Esoteric Church of the Fourth Sacrament was just around the corner.

The reason behind taking a civilian vehicle rather than a military grade transport was to keep the element of surprise when they reached the church. A Mako parking in front of the building may arouse suspicion if not outright scare off the church members, leaving it empty of suspects if they turn out to be docile, or greeting Shepard's team with bullets if they're not. An anonymous car with tinted windows just made more sense.  
The church itself didn't look like any house of worship one would normally imagine, blending in with the neighboring buildings like it was just a hole-in-the-wall club with a plain sign bearing the name but no symbol to speak of.

_Perhaps that was the point,_ Shepard thought as he, Liara, and Vega exited their vehicle. _Maybe they don't want outsiders to stick their noses in their business?_

Whatever it was the church preached, they must have needed an inconspicuous place to do it without arousing suspicion. Hopefully their secrecy was merely out of fear of criticism more than because of any real malicious workings within their religion, but as Shepard was about to find out, this was like praying for clean rain on Tuchanka.

The perfectly normal door led to a flight of stairs going deeper into the building's interior, which was unlit as far as Shepard could tell. The team was lightly armed, drawing their pistols and switching on the built-in illuminators under their barrels.

They descended warily, doing their best to stay silent. Despite the war with the Reapers, the interior of the building was well kept if one ignored the fine coat of dust evenly covering the steps and the warm musky smell. To anyone investigating it closely, it would seem as if the stairs hadn't been used for days, either because the occupants never returned to the church for whatever reason, or they never left.

Regardless of the circumstances, there was still no light even when the party reached the foot of the stairs and continued through the single dark corridor that snaked its way through the belly of the structure. The layout was tight and most sections of the hallway could only fit two people shoulder to shoulder. A few doors peeked from alcoves in the walls on both sides, but these were discovered to only be closets with cleaning supplies and candles along with other things typically found in religious houses.

Shepard figured if there was anyone inside, they would most likely be in the assembly room, but it wasn't until a few minutes of searching that something finally showed up on their biometric scanners, which before then had been glitchy for some unknown reason. _So there are still people here after all, _Shepard thought. But that wasn't all.  
"Shepard," Liara spoke in a low whisper, "I… I feel something."

Shepard ordered the team to halt and turned to face her. "'Felt something?'" he asked. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw Liara staring straight ahead with her blue eyes wide in unmistakable fear. "Liara," he urged, "What is it? What's wrong?"

"There's something else down there. It hurts..." She put the palm of her free hand on her forehead and her shoulders tensed in discomfort. She looked at Shepard pleadingly. "Shepard, may we please leave?"

The expression on her face reminded Shepard of a terrified child; what he was looking at was pure, instinctual fear of something unknown. It was only thanks to Liara's surprising fortitude that she hadn't already gone dumb with terror.

"Hey," Shepard gently grasped her shoulders. "It's okay. We'll all be fine, I promise, but I need you to focus for me. Can you do that, Liara?"

She looked like she was on the verge of tears. After a nervous shiver and a deep breath, Liara's shoulders relaxed as she regained her composure.

"I'm sorry; I don't know what came over me. I'm okay now."

Shepard smiled warmly and released her. "Good," he said, watching his cool breath rising above his vision. "We're just here to investigate—" he cut himself off as the wisps of his breath floated in the air like mist.

Vega exhaled experimentally and produced the same results. "What the fuck? Did someone turn on the AC down here?" They could have sworn the atmosphere was humid a second ago, now there was a chill seeping from somewhere further down the corridor.

Vega glanced at the bio-scanner in his hand and nearly jumped out of his BDUs. "Whoa, Commander! Something just popped up, here. Its readings are off the charts!"

As if trying to prove it, the scanner sparked and smoked from every opening in its aluminum frame and became too hot to hold. Vega dropped it with a hiss as the heat reached the skin of his hand. Its parts burned red through the darkness and melted together into one on the floor and steamed heavily despite the cold air.

"Well, damn…" Vega said insightfully.

The three of them looked at one another. "We have to get to the assembly room, fast."

Luckily, before it turned into slag, Vega had memorized the direction of the bio-readings on the scanner. The enormous source of energy was not far, and sure enough, the corridor finally led them to a pair of stout oak doors flanked by the first sources of light they had found in the church in the form of floor candles.

The doors would open inwards, so Shepard had the other two members of his team stack up beside them; Vega on the left, and Shepard and Liara on the right. On a nod, Vega and Shepard kicked open the doors simultaneously and rushed inside followed by Liara, pistols at the ready.

* * *

Shepard wanted to vomit everything he had ever eaten in his life. He tried to keep his eyes from popping out of his skull like they were trying to escape the horror they saw, and they began to sting with dryness when their lids refused to blink. He didn't realize at first that he was shaking all over, and that his mouth had dropped open in a soundless scream.

He heard Liara scream behind him, though, and Vega stammering something incredulously.

"Wha- what the fuck is that _thing?_"

The room they had just entered would have looked like any normal sanctuary in a church on a good day with the pews pushed against the walls, had there not been blood literally everywhere; everything was covered in gore from the ceiling to the walls and to the wooden planks beneath their feet. Covering almost as much were sigils and etchings that had to have been authored by a true madman and were painful to look at directly.

On the floor was drawn with some unidentifiable substance a wide circle with eight short arrows stemming from its circumference. It was what occupied the circle that stopped Shepard with fear.

The thing was a hideous lump of flesh, a conglomeration of bodies pushed into one like pieces of wet clay. It was covered in bulbous, bloodshot eyes, screaming mouths, and black thorn-like spines. It was something that simply should not be, and every second that he beheld it brought Shepard a step closer to madness.

In one gangly, disproportionate hand it held a limp robed figure like a child would a doll, and blood streamed down its arm and pooled on the floor with the rest of the ichor that flooded the chamber. More bodies littered the thing's feet, all of them headless and strewn about as it tossed them aside.

The abomination leaned its fleshy head forward, causing rolls of fat to bunch up at its neck, and it curled its lips so high that it looked like it would peel off its whole face. Rows of jagged, rotted teeth parted and closed back around its victim's torso and pulled half of what was left of it away in its revolting mouth.

As it did so, its many eyes rolled in Shepard's direction, quietly considering him and his team as it crunched bone and gristle with red ropes of its meal hanging between its teeth.

It was upon them with a speed that completely belied its girth, and if it weren't for Shepard's extensive training and experience, the thing would have trampled him before he could leap out of its way. The others scattered just as quickly, pouring fire on it as they went.

It was difficult to miss such a huge target, but its flesh was like a sponge absorbing their bullets like they were nothing. Even the eyes that were burst gave it no pause, and it swung at them viciously with its claw-like hands.

Liara's form glowed with a warm white light, and with an outstretched arm a bolt of biotic energy flashed through the copper-smelling air and connected with the monster's face. The warp blast ate away its skin at the molecular level, and it was then that it cried out in an unearthly, guttural moan of anger.

"Liara," Shepard called out to her, "Keep hitting it! Don't let up!" More blasts of energy were flung across the room to harry the beast, and though they were slow to break apart its molecules, for a while it seemed to be working.

The thing stiffened and tensed its muscles, bracing itself for another blow, and struck out at Liara with its hand as she prepared to give it. Her slight body was hurled into the wooden pulpit at the far end of the assembly room with a crash and a grunt.

Shepard cried out in alarm, but he could do nothing but try to stay away from the thing's grasping hands. Finally, it was Vega who told Shepard to stay back.

The muscular Arms Master pulled a grenade from his belt and gripped it in one hand without priming it. In a dull whoosh and a flash of orange light, Vega's omni-blade materialized in his other hand. With his body ducked low, and his arms and shoulders braced at his sides, he charged straight at the monster at full speed.

The thing turned its attention away from Shepard to look at Vega, but it was too late for it to catch him leap up and latch himself on its spiny back, driving his blade into it like a climber's stake. The thing roared in pain as the holographic weapon bit deep. Now Vega thumbed the primer to his grenade, and when its red light started blinking, he shoved it into one of the many chomping ancillary mouths before he jumped away.

The mad beeping from the explosive could be heard from inside the thing's body, and it shrieked in frustration, apparently knowing its fate already.

By the time it detonated, Shepard and Vega were already flat on their stomachs to avoid the concussive blast, as well as the thing's messy entrails as they sailed through the air. Unfortunately, there was just too much of it to escape completely.

When the dust settled, the team was back on its feet again with Liara picking herself back up out of the ruined pulpit and the other two climbing to their feet and Vega groaning unsatisfactorily over the reeking, smoldering hunks of meat that covered him.

"God damn… Can we please get the hell out of this crazy-house, Loco?"

Shepard took a weary glance at his chronometer as he pushed himself off the ground: 6:45 PM.


	6. Chapter 5 (PREVIEW)

Chapter 5: **PREVIEW**

_**Here I am throwing previews at you all again in the hope that it will satiate you all for now. The fact that a preview is posted should (hopefully) suggest that I'm making some sort of progress... however slow that may be ^^'**_

_**As with the previous chapter, I will replace this preview with a final submission as soon as it's ready. Thank you all for your patience, and enjoy.**_

The drive back to base was a long and silent one, but the tension was there and could be felt by all three of them within the car interior. In all honesty however, no one said a word mostly because they had no way of explaining what just happened.

Shepard, with Liara and James Vega, wasted no time hurrying back up into the sunlight and away from that pit of insanity called the "Esoteric Church of the Fourth Sacrament." After that… _thing_ was killed, its body disintegrated into nothing, and very quickly it seemed as if it had never been there at all had it not been for the cuts and bruises the three still felt from its vicious attacks.

When they finally reached the base after what felt like days since they departed, Shepard gave his teammates a wordless nod of dismissal. Liara was so deep in thought that she hardly even acknowledged him with a glance before walking away, her face expressionless except for her eyes betraying inner pain.

Vega lingered by the ground car a while longer and sat against the side door. He and Shepard remained silent and contemplative until they simultaneously sighed in exhaustion.

"Commander, I…" Vega began, "What was that?"

Shepard didn't have to ask what he was referring to since the same thing was on his mind.

He shrugged. "James, if I knew, I'd tell you." Shepard watched Vega reach into a pocket on his fatigues and with a shaking hand put a cigarette to his lips and struggle with a butane lighter. He got it going eventually, and took a long drag that he released with a sigh of relief.

"It was like something that _should not have been there_, you know? It didn't belong here. When I say here I don't mean in this city or even this planet, but _here_. It shouldn't exist at all! Hell, the Reapers feel more natural than that thing."

"It _doesn't_ exist anymore; you killed it, remember? It's good and dead."

Vega flicked his half-finished cigarette across the tarmac and pushed himself from the car. He dismissed himself saying he had things to do, and walked away.

Alone, without even base personnel nearby, Shepard watched the last sliver of the sun dip behind the roofs of London's buildings, leaving the world around him dark and colored like a bruise. Even as the light retreated from his spot, a darkness deeper than the night sky loomed over Shepard's head and spread across the ground, vaguely representing the shape of a human.

Shepard turned his head over his shoulder, then spun his whole body completely around when he saw who it was casting the shadow.

"You," Shepard breathed.

Alpharius raised his hand with his palm facing Shepard, a gesture that was both a greeting and a sign of non-hostility. "Aye, me. Didn't I say we would meet again soon?"

Shepard nodded, eyeing the tall man apprehensively and balling his fist, curious as to how he could cast a shadow against the light. "Yeah, I recall you saying we would meet if 'I were who you thought I was.' Well, what do you think now? Were you hoping I would get killed?"

Shepard walked up to the man and before Alpharius could reply, he threw him a vicious uppercut below his jaw, the only part of his face he could reach. The blow left Shepard's knuckles sore and he fought to keep from recoiling in pain. The man's skull must have been made of titanium.

He watched as Alpharius calmly recovered and casually spat out a line of blood from when he bit his bottom lip.

"You knew!" Shepard continued, "You knew what I was going to find down there. You knew and you didn't even bother telling me why. I don't care who you are, nobody needlessly puts the lives of my team in jeopardy!"

Alpharius looked at him levelly and shrugged in utter indifference.

"Of course I knew about it," the man said. "I helped create it."

Shepard looked at him in shock as his hand hovered unconsciously over his pistol. "What do you mean you created it? Who are you, really?"

"The church was just an ordinary house of worship, no different than any other obscure temple you would find on this world. When I arrived three days ago, I discovered it, took over, inserted my own people amongst its membership, and changed the name. Those of the original flock who did not wish to change their method of worship were disposed of. From what I've discovered, after what you call the 'Reaper Invasion,' it wasn't uncommon to find supposedly missing bodies floating in sewers or buried under rubble, so their disappearances were hardly noticed. It was exceedingly easy to do all of this, as nobody ever really acknowledged the little church's existence before, and a simple change in staff made no great impact in the grand scheme of things… so everyone thought."

The giant spoke of his monstrous deeds as casually and indifferent as if he was reading an essay before a classroom, but before Shepard could ask why he did it, he continued.

"It was entirely necessary, Commander, I assure you. If I hadn't spent the past week organizing that coven, it would have been too late to save this world."

"_Save it?_" Shepard snarled. "How could you possibly justify the murder of innocent people with saving the world, or with anything for that matter?"

Shepard drew his pistol and leveled it at the man's face.

"I've had enough of this. Last chance: tell me who you are." Shepard thought back at the PDA the man gave him before his little trip to the church. "What is Alpha Legion, some sort of terrorist cell? Cerberus wannabes? I've taken down shits like you ever since they made me an N7, from Torfan to Tuchanka. You don't stand a chance."

"A terrorist cell?" Alpharius scoffed at the label, showing the first signs of emotion Shepard had seen him display.

"Commander, you couldn't even know the half of it, not even if I spelled it out to you for a year. Your 'Cerberus' is nothing - _absolutely nothing _- compared to even a single finger on my hand, much less the Legion it serves." Alpharius leaned closer to Shepard and flexed his fingers to show his point.

"Who am I, you ask? Very well, then." he drew back to his full height, his face except for his eyes, now gleaming with fury and pride, covered in shadow, giving him a menacing mien.

"I am Alpharius, and that is all you need to know." His tone brooked no argument, but Shepard still didn't lower his firearm. "That creature you encountered in the church was a being from a plane of existence you could never comprehend with a sane mind, a taste of true horror. Did you see any of the cultists during your visit?"

Shepard shook his head. "No, but that thing was snacking on a few robed men."

"Yes. Those men willingly sacrificed their very souls to bring that daemon into this universe. Their bodies were merely nourishment for the beast."

"So you're telling me that monstrosity is some sort of alien from another dimension, and those cultists _summoned_ it? How is that possible?"

Alpharius shook his head and chuckled. "Oh, sweet, sweet, blissful ignorance. There are powers that exist that your people will be made very well aware of soon, and you will either all go mad or end up dead."

The man lifted his gaze over Shepard's head and slowly walked past him to stare at the last rays of sunlight in the night sky.

"Soon the galaxy as you know it will be shattered, replaced with pure terror, paranoia, evil, death. Death like you've never seen, Commander. This very world will die at the hands of its children, but its inhabitants will continue to build upon its bones, and meanwhile mankind will spread across the galaxy in a wave of hatred and fury that will last millennia.

"Once-devoted sons will turn on their fathers, brothers will murder each other, and their children will do nothing but meditate on blood and betrayal.

"Whole planets will burn into nothing, lives both alien and human will be extinguished, and soon all of it will be gone: the planets, the stars, the people, all will eventually disappear with nothing to fill the black void but the laughter of thirsting gods."

It all sounded too familiar to Shepard, and to his surprise, the pain in Alpharius' voice touched him, as if all of what he was saying was certain to pass. Shepard lowered his pistol to side as he listened to him give his premonition.

"It's not going to be like that, Alpharius. We defeated the Reapers. There's nothing left out there to cause all this suffering you're talking about. The galaxy is free."

The giant man kept his back to Shepard and pointed a long finger at the sky over their heads.

"Have you already forgotten about the fleet bearing down on you, or the monstrosity you killed? Those are your new slavers come to turn your home into hell, and they will stop at nothing to do so."


End file.
